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My parents have asked me to look into Equity Release for them and after a quick Google and not really liking what I found I thought here may be a good place to ask

My dad is 76 & my mum is 70, my dad is retired and my mum still works 15 hours a week although she is now struggling to keep this up, they have a house currently worth around Â£750k with an Â£80k interest only mortgage on it, they obviously don't feel that their pensions are enough to support them if my mum stops working and would also like to do some work in their home to make it more suitable for them as they get older.

With an equity release, all they would be doing is the financial equivalent of simultaneously increasing the interest rate and stopping the payments on their current IO mortgage and letting them mount up. As you've probably read, this can mount up rapidly and to very high values.

Why dont they consider downsizing? At some point, perhaps if one of them needs care, they may need to sell and then they'd need to pay for the changes to be done all over again. Plus the changes they make to their house may devalue it, so sort of a financial double whammy making it harder to move.

No doubt they are fond of this house, but if you can get them to appreciate that at some point they will most probably have to move anyway, doing it now, whilst its under their control, might be a better plan and certainly far cheaper? They could buy something for say Â£500k and release a lot of money.

My brother and I live very close to each other so would really like them to sell up and move closer to us especially as they are ageing now and they currently live around a 45 - 60 minute drive from us, however they have lived in their house for 38 years and have tried to move a few times always pulling out at the last minute as my dad doesn't want to move....it's so hard, I don't want to pressurize them but they could buy a house or flat where we live for around Â£550k and then come out with a good Â£150k which to me makes far more sense....

Annoying isnt it ? I know of a lot of elderly people like this, one recently caused massive problems to her children through this attitude*, you wonder if you will become like that in your dotage.

I think you just need to work on them more. Are there any nice retirement apartments nearby you could show them? ISTR someone like Churchill or similar run a scheme whereby you can rent a flat for a week to try out the lifestyle.

* she didnt want to "move away from her neighbourhood" despite the fact she never went out of the house (literally apart from hospitals and doctors) and never saw anyone as all her previously local friends had died or moved away.